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Sunday, November 07, 2010

Rusty trigger fingers, Shotguns, and Other miscellania...

I brought along not only my CCW piece, but also my Ruger 22/45 trainer, with the best intentions of getting at least a little bit of trigger time while in New Hamster. I even picked up a couple boxes of .22 at Marko's local gun dealer on the way in, since I hadn't had any rimfire other than the loose stuff in my ammo can, which is a little verboten for air travel.

As it turned out, a combination of either rain, sleet, or cold, plus a bad case of vacationitis slackissmus prevented me from so much as stepping out the door into the back yard and busting a single cap. So I'll be headed to Iggle Crick with one of my new Pistol-Training.com targets here in a minute to make sure I still remember from which end the bullet emerges.

Incidentally, we stopped at Marko's local gun shop again on the way back, where he found a good deal on a very solid early Remington Model 11, one of the ones with the safety inside the trigger guard instead of a crossbolt, so probably made in the nineteen-teens. The barrel showed signs of having been re-blued, but long enough ago that the re-bluing had started to brown nicely. Thanks to the Blue Book being a little unrealistically soft on those, it was priced cheap enough that if Marko hadn't put it on layaway, it would have been worth it for me to have had it shipped back. And the guy behind the counter was awful friendly, plus it was the first shop I've been in in eons that I didn't get the compulsive urge to start tidying merchandise; everything was all squared away. You should buy stuff from them if you're in the area.

Next time you come to NWIND to visit Cabelas, you're only about ten miles away from Westforths which is a great store, also very squared-away, with a good selection of new and used heaters, (also fishing gear) and the whole damned store is a gunsafe- you'd just have to see it. Also Blythes, which was an old store when I was a kid, and old Dick Blythe is still in the store all the time, always ready to tell an off color joke and show off his hunting trophies from around the world. Both places are an easy mark for a sharp negotiator, too.

BTW, Westforths has a half acre of A-5's starting in the middle 2s. Including a couple of very nice round-pistol-grip 12's, one at $265 I've seen bad Rem 11's higher than that. I've always wanted one, and someday soon I'm gonna get me one of those, if they're not already all gone

Damn. I keep mulling a Model 11 or one of the clones (okay, I guess technically speaking the 11 is the clone). Sure, there are some terrific autoloading shotguns around these days, but something about that chunky, mechanically intricate piece of iron just grabs me.

And of course, there's the designer to consider. I don't know about heaven and hell, but if you can't score heavenly points by owning JMB (PBUH) hardware, then I'm going full bore atheist.

You talked me into replacing Dad's Model 11 that was stolen in 1975. OK, he actually replaced it in 1976 w/a Leavenworth guard's Win 97 (had to replace the feed-tube, it had 'knucklebumps' from a few hard headed felons). But since they stole the 11 from me, I've always been on the lookout for a good 11 @ a good price to replace the original. This letter made me get up and go pull the trigger. So to speak. Nice walnut, I think she's pretty as a speckled pup.